What hands would you rather play against 5 or 6 opponents than against 1 or 2 opponents, and vice versa, and why?

I'll happily take a link to an article, tried googling and didn't find much.

none or if I flop AAx with AA I play multiway against anyone and everyone or royal flush...you get the point

Anything nutsy is ok but even weakre nuts can loose..Paired board in multiaway pot is the worst unless you just hit the nuts with it

Hands like JJ and AK play better heads up. Hands like T9s-76s play better multiway.

Basically if you've got one high pair or a hand that's mostly going to make one pair, you want to be heads up. If you have a straight/flush/combo draw you want multiway action making your drawing odds better.

That makes perfect sense, but then why do so many poker strategy books and articles say that if you have KK or QQ or even 88 in the pocket you should raise to drive out people who could hit draws that beat your hand?

because you ideally want to get heads up with a player who has a worse pair than you and who can only beat you by making a set (2 outs) - rather than a bunch of players holding pp's, SC's etc who can beat you in a multitude of ways.

You don't raise KK hoping to get people to fold but rather hoping that they will call with worse.

This. If you knew everyone at the table would call with worse, then you would open shove KK along with a number of other hands and put your whole stack in against 8 others.

OP, generally the concept is that hands that make good but vulnerable hands like overpairs and TPTK (so big pairs and strong aces) you want to bet big which results in often playing heads-up and hands that are weak, can be folded easily but sometimes make monsters (baby pairs and SCs) you want to see cheap flops, play multi-way and get paid when you hit.

So it's almost more of a pot-odds thing than an actual, if I have T9s I'll magically have more outs with 5 opponents than 2, it's just that with the riskier hands you want a bigger reward to warrant the risk?

Basically, and the fact that you're more likely to win that big multiway pot with a straight than top pair.

Because when there is a lot of money still to play and you're in the hand with many opponents, you have no idea what the have or what you're up against. Clueless poker is bad poker.

What you really want is to raise enough so that they call but put in too much money in the risk/reward sense.

For example, the best possible scenario is to have AA, move all in, and get called in 9 spots. Most people will tell you they only want one caller, but most people are idiots when it comes to poker.

On the other hand, when the other guy has AA, you want him to raise just a little so you can call with 22 or 87s, assuming he's the kind of guy who is "sneaky" and gets married to a hand. Against good players, as Ed Miller points out, you need to be able to bluff to call raises against stronger hands with 87s to make the hand profitable. But that's a different subject.

Should be stickied IMO.

I'd rather play suited connectors and small-med pocket pairs vs more opponents and high pairs and AK, AQs, JJ, QQ vs less opponents

Hands like JJ and AK play better heads up. Hands like T9s-76s play better multiway.

Tell me if I'm starting to get this:

Against 9 opponents your AA will "only" win 31% of the time, but against 1 opponent it will win 86% of the time. So at face value that may look bad, but if you bet $10 on AA against 9 opponents 100 times, you should win 31 of them, and each time you'll win $90, with 31*$90=$2790. Against 1 opponent you'll win 86 times but you'll only win $860.

So if you do go AI with AA, get several callers, and someone outdraws you, you just have to tell yourself, take your lumps, it was the right decision, get back on the horse.

That the idea?

errr kind of. AA is the best starting hand right? cause it wins more than any other hand - right? So if you go all in, you want all those callers because NONE of them can have a better starting hand (with a higher likelihood of winning) than you. Who wouldnt want to get all in with the number 1 top winning hand vs any number of callers?